The Old Man 407rational part, morals proper." It is also clear that, according to Kant him¬
self, the metaphysics of morals, just like the metaphysics of nature, had to
be "carefully purified of everything empirical so that we can know what rea¬
son can accomplish in each case and from what sources it creates its a pri¬
ori teaching."^90 Kant was perhaps too successful in purifying his moral
concepts. He made it difficult even for dedicated scholars of his work to
make out which, as a matter of fact, were the anthropological concepts that
he so carefully purified to give rise to the purely moral ones. If only for
this reason, the Anthropology is a most important work.
What the Anthropology offers is, of course, different from what a present-
day discussion of this subject would give to us. It is an attempt to answer
the philosophical question, "What is man?" To that end, Kant presents a
great deal of the empirical psychology that informs his critical philosophy.
The first part, which makes up about 75 percent of the book, deals with
just that. In it, Kant presents his views on the cognitive faculty (Book I),
the faculty of feeling pleasure and displeasure (Book II), and the faculty of
desire (Book III). It is interesting that, while these three books correspond
in a fairly straightforward way to his three Critiques, the order in which he
presents them in the Anthropology is different from the order in which
they were written. The material critically discussed in Critique of Judgment,
which was in fact written last, occupies the middle place. This was no
accident. This is where it should belong in his philosophical system. It is
his moral and political philosophy that comes last and was most important
to him.
The second part of the work, which deals with "1) the character of the
person, 2) the character of the sex, 3) the character of the nation, 4) the
character of the race, and 5) the character of the species," is in some sense
nothing but an extension of the last book of Part I. It is also a reaffirmation
of the thesis Kant had pushed so hard to advance in his historical and polit¬
ical essays of the late eighties and the nineties. Kant says that he intends topresent the human species not as evil, but as a species of rational beings, striving among
obstacles to advance constantly from the evil to the good. In this respect our intention
in general is good, but achievement is difficult because we cannot expect to reach our
goal by free consent of individuals, but only through progressive organizations of the
citizens of the earth within and toward the species as a system which is united by cos¬
mopolitan bonds.^91This also explains the title of the book. The Anthropology is an. Anthropology
from a Pragmatic Point of View because it is meant not just to investigate